Bunker Hill: A City, a Siege, a Revolution

by Nathaniel Philbrick

  Where Warren had started his oration by insisting that his own words could not match those of the previous Massacre Day orators—“You will not now expect the elegance, the learning, the fire, the enrapturing strains of eloquence which charmed you when a Lovell, a Church, or a Hancock spake,” he had humbly begun—Bolton immediately went for the jugular. “I cannot boast the ignorance of Hancock,” he sardonically insisted, “the insolence of Adams, the absurdity of Rowe, the arrogance of Lee, the vicious life and untimely death of Molineux, the turgid bombast of Warren, the treason of Quincy, the hypocrisy of Cooper, nor the principles of Young.”

  The oration was a masterwork of character assassination. Hancock was “resolved to make a public attempt to become a monarch.” He was also a notorious ladies’ man, whose numerous paramours included the “cook maid Betty Price.” William Molineux, Bolton claimed, had “through the strength of his own villainy and the laudanum of Doctor Warren . . . quitted this planet and went to a secondary one in search of liberty.” Warren was such a boring speaker, Bolton insisted, that most of his listeners were asleep by the time he had finished his oration. Thomas Young was an atheist, and Dr. Samuel Cooper, besides “prostituting his religion” by preaching rebellion instead of “holy writ,” was guilty of adultery. The patriots might claim they were on the side of righteousness, but in actuality they were conniving, carnal, and egotistical.

  Bolton lampooned John Rowe for having speculated about how tea and salt water might mix, and Rowe was indignant. “This day an oration was delivered by a dirty scoundrel . . . ,” he recorded in his diary, “wherein many characters were unfairly represented and much abused and mine among the rest.” Even normally even-tempered John Andrews was miffed: “A person must [be] more than a stoic to prevent his irascibility rising.”

  In truth, the patriots were no different from any group of people. All of them were flawed, and all of them had something to hide. Benjamin Church, who may or may not have had a hand in writing the mock oration, was doing his best to conceal that he was financially overextended and had at least one mistress—not to mention the fact that he was a spy for the British. That winter Isaiah Thomas, publisher of the Massachusetts Spy, suffered the indignity of watching his wife, Mary, conduct a very public affair with the young and dashing Major Benjamin Thompson. In addition to being an already married officer in the New Hampshire militia, Thompson, like Benjamin Church, later proved to be a spy for Thomas Gage. Perhaps using the affair as a way to learn more about the patriots’ increasingly clandestine activities, Thompson took Mary Dill Thomas on a trip to Portsmouth and back in which they spent no less than five nights together in as many taverns and guesthouses. In divorce papers he filed two years later, Thomas recounted how his wife had defiantly told him that she “would roast in hell rather than give [Thompson] up.”

  The affair was unsavory and no doubt embarrassing for Thomas, but at least he could claim that he had done nothing wrong. Such was not the case, however, when it came to the carefully guarded secret held by Dr. Joseph Warren.

  —

  March 30 was sunny and very cold, with a few showers of wispy snow, as noted by Dr. Nathaniel Ames of Dedham in his diary. He also recorded that he traveled to Boston that day to visit his good friend Joseph Warren. Whether on March 30 or a week or so later in early April, Ames returned to the tavern he owned with a new boarder, whom he described in his account book as Warren’s “fair incognita pregnans.” The girl’s name was Sally Edwards, and she was about six months pregnant. If two letters Mercy Scollay later wrote, in which she refers to Edwards as a “little hussy” and a “vixen,” are any indication, Scollay did not have much sympathy for the woman’s plight. Given that Sally Edwards ended up living with the same family that took in Warren’s oldest daughter, Betsy, it’s possible that Edwards had been a nanny for Joseph Warren’s children.

  There is also the possibility that Sally Edwards had become pregnant by another man, and that Warren was providing her with a discreet safe haven. In all likelihood, however, in mid- to late September 1774, when Warren was caught up in the excitement of the Powder Alarm and the Suffolk Resolves, he got a young woman named Sally Edwards pregnant.

  When Mercy Scollay learned of this indiscretion is an open question. Warren’s account book reveals that he treated Scollay several times in September 1774, including two visits in a single day, during which he treated her with ipecac, an emetic used until quite recently to induce vomiting after a poisonous substance has been ingested. In the eighteenth century, however, ipecac had an additional use based on the ancient belief that disease was the result of an imbalance in four essential humors: blood, phlegm, choler (or yellow bile), and black bile. Too much of any one humor created physical as well as emotional problems. For example, too much black bile meant that you suffered from melancholy; too much phlegm and you were stolid or phlegmatic. It was up to the doctor to restore the balance in the humors. Bleeding was one popular way to bring the levels back in sync, as was purgation, and ipecac was used to reduce the levels of choler through vomiting. This meant that about the time Warren may have had sexual relations with Sally Edwards, he was treating Scollay for excessive anger and irritability.

  Scollay’s last recorded visit to Warren’s office was on March 19, 1775, and within a few weeks’ time, Sally Edwards was safely tucked away at the Ames tavern in Dedham. By then, or soon after, Joseph Warren and Mercy Scollay had agreed to marry.

  —

  On March 30, the same sunny, unseasonably cold day that Dr. Nathaniel Ames traveled from Dedham to Boston, General Hugh Percy led the First Brigade on a march into the countryside. All winter, Gage had been sending the soldiers on brief forays out of Boston. They provided much-needed exercise for the regulars and accustomed the surrounding towns to having soldiers in their midst. This might prove beneficial to Gage when he launched a truly decisive move against the patriots. Lulled into a state of relative placidity by the previous exercises, the country people wouldn’t realize that the operation was the real thing until it was too late.

  But on March 30, that all changed when at six in the morning, Percy marched across Boston Neck with the one thousand soldiers under his command in the First Brigade. Lieutenant John Barker recorded in his diary that “it alarmed the people a good deal. Expresses were sent to every town near.” What Joseph Warren described as “great numbers, completely armed” appeared on the roads around Boston. At the bridge at Cambridge, the boards were pulled up to prevent the soldiers from crossing the Charles River. At Watertown, the next town on the river beyond Cambridge, two pieces of artillery were positioned at the bridge in anticipation of the troops’ arrival. No trouble occurred, however, and by 11:00 a.m., after five hours of marching through the countryside, Percy and his brigade were back in Boston. The march had been only an exercise, but given the size of the British force it could have easily turned into something much more dangerous.

  At ten the next morning, the Boston Committee of Correspondence sponsored a meeting of what was known as the “little Senate,” the committee representing the towns neighboring Boston, in the selectmen’s chamber in Faneuil Hall to discuss the issues raised by Gage’s most recent move. This meant that even as Warren was attempting to arrange matters for Sally Edwards, he was helping to formulate the policy that would govern what happened the next time Gage sent a brigade into the country.

  The committee decided that since Percy’s men were “without baggage or artillery,” the regulars had not been out “to destroy any magazines or abuse the people” and did not therefore pose a significant threat. If the country people had attacked Percy’s brigade on March 30, they might have been judged guilty of exactly the kind of reckless act of aggression that the patriot leadership wanted to avoid. So as to prevent such an “unnecessary effusion of blood,” the Provincial Congress responded to the committee’s recommendation by passing the following resolve: “That whenever the army . . . to the number of 500, sha
ll march out of the town of Boston with artillery and baggage, it ought to be deemed a design to carry into execution by force the late acts of Parliament . . . [and] ought to be opposed; and therefore the military force of the province ought to be assembled, and an army of observation immediately formed, to act solely on the defensive so long as it can be justified on the principles of reason and self-preservation.”

  No one—neither the provincials nor Gage and his army—wanted to be judged guilty of initiating what might very well become a bloody war. Massachusetts risked losing the support of the other colonies; the king and the North administration risked losing the support of Parliament and the British people. And yet both sides were under pressure to do something more than simply wait it out. Many of the patriots feared that if nothing happened soon, an unsatisfactory compromise might be the result, and they’d be right back to where they started. Gage had spent the fall and winter doing his best to prevent an explosion of violence and was now awaiting word from Lord Dartmouth on how he should proceed. In the meantime, even his most politically moderate officers had lost all patience with these upstart provincials. As a Whig, General Percy had been predisposed to sympathize with the New Englanders; by the winter, however, all sympathy had been lost. “The people here are the most designing, artful villains in the world,” he wrote to a relative back in England. “They have not the . . . least scruple of taking the most solemn oath on any matter that can assist their purpose, though they know the direct contrary can be clearly and evidently proved in half an hour.”

  Percy’s accusation of duplicity was about to meet a critical test. As of early April, the Provincial Congress had determined that the Committee of Safety could not issue an alarm unless the battalion of regulars was equipped with baggage and artillery. Since February, members of the Provincial Congress, most notably the lawyer Joseph Hawley, had expressed concern that an undue amount of power had been granted to the committee respecting this important issue. Given what had happened back in September with the Powder Alarm, they knew that if a battalion of soldiers ventured from Boston and another regionwide alarm was sounded, a commencement of hostilities was almost guaranteed. “When once the blow is struck,” Hawley wrote to Thomas Cushing, “it must be followed, and we must conquer, or all is lost forever. . . . I beg you, therefore, as you love your country to use your utmost influence with our Committee of Safety, that the people be not mustered, and that hostilities be not commenced, until we have the express, categorical decision of the continent [i.e. the rest of the colonies] that the time is absolutely come that hostilities ought to begin.”

  Even Hawley realized that gaining the consent of the other colonies might prove impractical given the possible suddenness of a move on the part of Gage. To help prevent any individual or small coterie of individuals on the Committee of Safety from co-opting the agenda of the patriot movement and prematurely starting a war, Congress had already determined that the vote of five members of the Committee of Safety was required before issuing the alarm. As a further safeguard, Congress also decided that not more than one of these five members could be from Boston, thus requiring that a meeting of those members who lived outside the city be convened before the trigger was pulled. And so the Committee of Safety had its orders. Before the alarm could be sounded, three conditions must be met: first, the British force must exceed five hundred men; second, the soldiers must be equipped with baggage and artillery; third, five members of the committee must vote in favor of the alarm.

  Thanks to Benjamin Church, Gage quickly learned of the Provincial Congress’s resolve. Gage now knew that as long as the next group of regulars to leave Boston had no artillery or baggage, the patriots could do nothing—according to their own legislature—to oppose them. It remained to be seen whether the patriots would obey their representatives.

  Part II

  REBELLION

  Here’s fine revolution,

  an we had the trick to see ’t.

  —William Shakespeare, Hamlet

  We cannot make events. Our business is wisely to improve them.

  —Samuel Adams to the Reverend Samuel Cooper, April 30, 1776

  Should the whole frame of nature round him break,

  In ruin and confusion hurled,

  He, unconcerned, would hear the mighty crack,

  And stand secure amidst a falling world.

  —Joseph Addison’s translation of Horace’s Odes, book 3, ode 3

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Trick to See It

  On April 2, Joseph Warren received a letter from Arthur Lee, an American in London who had become a close friend of Josiah Quincy Jr. Lee had encouraged Quincy at the end of March to believe that war between America and Great Britain was inevitable. Lee’s letter to Warren (written back on December 21, 1774) sounded a similarly alarmist note. In December, both houses of Parliament had voted in support of the ministry’s conviction that Massachusetts was now in “actual rebellion.” What’s more, additional regiments were on their way to reinforce Gage’s already considerable army of almost three thousand regulars. Warren seized upon the news as a reason to send out the call to the members of the Provincial Congress, many of whom had returned home, to reconvene in Concord. After a troubling winter of infighting and irresolution, this was just the news to shake the delegates out of what Warren called “that state of security into which many have endeavored to lull them.”

  Warren still hoped for a reconciliation with Great Britain, but this had not prevented him from doing everything possible to prepare the province for war. As a member of the Committee of Safety, he had led efforts to assemble military stores in Worcester, Concord, and other towns throughout the province. He also worked to provide some organization to the provincial “army of observation” that would take the field in the event of an incursion by the British. What’s more, he had begun to prepare himself for a possible conflict. He might be trained as a doctor, but if it should come to war, he intended to fight.

  By one account, Warren had spent the last “several years . . . preparing himself by study and observation to take a conspicuous rank in the military arrangements which he knew must ensue.” His father had once told him, “I would rather a son of mine were dead than a coward,” and he seems to have taken that parental directive to heart. Rather than oversee the medical side of the provincial army, he ultimately hoped to be “where wounds were to be made, rather than where they were to be healed.” If glory was to be won in this possible conflict with the mother country, the place to do it was not in the Provincial Congress (of which he was now a member) or even the Continental Congress; it was on the battlefield.

  Warren’s biggest obstacle to achieving this goal was his own outsize talent. His seemingly limitless capacity for work, along with his unmatched ability to adapt his own actions to meet the demands of the moment, meant that as the speed of events began to increase in the days ahead, he was inevitably looked to as the person to keep the patriot cause together. Given that he was now an influential member of the Provincial Congress and of the perhaps even more powerful Committee of Safety, most assumed that his role was in government. But that is not where Warren ultimately wanted to be. He knew that if he was going to alter the preconceptions people had about him, he must prove himself as a soldier, and so in the weeks ahead he not only continued his leadership role in the Congress and the Committee of Safety: he would be present in the ranks at virtually every encounter between colonial and British forces.

  Accompanying this shift in vocation was a dramatic change in attitude. In the fall Warren had worked to soothe the outrage of the country people. By the spring, he was desperately attempting to inject some life into what had become a dangerously listless Provincial Congress. “Such was his versatility,” one observer recorded, “that he turned from . . . lectures of caution and prudence to asserting and defending the most bold and undisguised principles of liberty, and defying in their very teeth the agents
of the crown.” When one night his medical apprentice William Eustis warned him that some British officers were lurking suspiciously near his house, he announced, “I have a visit to make to a lady in Cornhill this evening and I will go at once; come with me.” Warren placed two pistols in his pockets, and they went about their rounds. In another instance, Warren and Eustis overheard some officers speaking condescendingly about the military skills of the New Englanders. “These fellows say we won’t fight,” Warren erupted. “By heavens! I hope I shall die up to my knees in blood!”

  What Eustis and other patriots took to be Warren’s natural and laudatory adjustment to the increasingly perilous times was seen by the loyalists as part of a highly calculated strategy. Since it was the quickest way to achieve their secret goal of independence, Warren and his mentor Samuel Adams had been, the loyalists insisted, hoping for a war from the very beginning. Thomas Hutchinson claimed that “as [Warren] discovered a great degree of martial as well as political courage,” he wanted nothing less than “to become the Cromwell of North America.” Peter Oliver agreed. “Conquer or die were the only alternatives with him, and he publicly declared that ‘he would mount the last round of the ladder or die in the attempt’”—a particularly evocative attribution, given the fate of Warren’s father.